Some salts remember
a brick-size Magellan as the first GPS they took to sea; then the company
went through changes and almost slipped from sight. Well, Magellan is
back, big time. In fact the company has introduced so many interesting
handheld GPSs that they’re hard to sort out. (Magellan also recently
started a line of fixed plotters.)

The SportTrak and Meridian
lines differ somewhat in size and style, particularly in the Meridian’s
ability to supplement internal memory with SD cards. The SportTrakPro
Marine model sports a high-detail marine base map not shared with its
color sibling (which also has an electronic compass), but the only difference
between a Meridian Color model and its Marine sister is the screen.

With a download from
a $170 CD of MapSend BlueNav Charts, which are derived from Navionics’
new Gold format, my bright and fast trial color unit became the smallest
full-detail plotter I’ve ever used. Once you’ve registered the
CD to the specific GPS, you can download any chart region in the United
States, but only one at a time. In other words, the full-detail charts
are inexpensive, but you have to take along a computer if you want to
cruise far. The $550 Meridian Color’s user interface is well designed,
and the unit seemed exceptionally able to pull in GPS signals in difficult
conditions.